Leadership Inspirations – Continuous Learning

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn as if you were to live forever.” Mohandas Gandhi (1869 – 1948) Political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement. Pioneered satyagraha – resistance to tyranny through mass civil resistance

Are You Ready to Declare War?

There are millions of companies in the world. Most fail far short of the owners’ ambitions. You would think they fail or frustrate for millions of reasons. But there are really only four. How can that be? Only four? Yes and I will explain. Let me start with the first: About the Author Mark Stevens […]

StrategyDriven Human Performance Management Best Practice Article

Human Performance Management Best Practice 3 – Qualify, Verify, and Validate

Human error reduction not only applies to the performance of operational activities but to analytical tasks as well. Errors made during performance of these tasks frequently go unnoticed at the time of occurrence, only to become consequentially evident when action is taken based on the errant analysis. These latent errors can have an equally devastating financial, environmental, asset and human impact as operational performance errors; simply occurring with greater time separation between the error and the event. Therefore, human error reduction must be applied to these activities too.

4 Ways to Fail at Failing

As a recent special issue in the Harvard Business Review points out, failing well is a critical skill that differentiates organizations that can learn and even benefit from failures. But most companies I work with fall victim to one or more of these barriers to making the most of the failures they have. About the […]

The TKO Interview: Five Ways to Fire Before You Hire… and Find the Right Person for the Job

Hasty hiring brings eventual firing. These wise words should be the mantra for every organization hiring from today’s overcrowded job market. Especially if your company’s current hiring process consists of putting out a job posting, sifting through résumés, and hiring the first person who doesn’t throw up a major red flag during an interview, it’s […]

StrategyDriven Talent Management Best Practice Article

Talent Management Best Practice 1 – Ensure Employability

Decades ago, an individual typically had the opportunity to work for their entire career within one company. Times have changed. Process automation and streamlining as a form of cost reduction has driven corporate rightsizing; eliminating the lifelong job security of times past and heightening employment risk. Combined with evolving employee tastes and a need to increase productivity, talent development takes on new importance.

StrategyDriven Human Performance Management Forum

StrategyDriven Human Performance Management Forum

Excellent business strategies fail to deliver superior results when not executed well. Subsequently, consistent, high-quality human performance becomes a critical component to successfully achieving the organization’s goals. Yet, being human means making errors. Even well-intentioned, hardworking employees will make 3 errors out of every 100 actions taken simply because of the human condition. Thus, the […]

StrategyDriven Project Management Article

Project Management – Post Implementation Productivity

Projects introduce new products and services, processes, applications, and standards to the organization. Regardless of the change, individuals within the organization will not possess the same level of familiarity and proficiency with these new item(s) as they had with those already existing. Subsequently, productivity will drop in magnitude and duration correlating to the change preparation of the organization.

StrategyDriven Organizational Accountability Article

Fire the Slugs! And Other Great, No-Nonsense Ways to Retain Your Best People

There isn’t an organization anywhere that doesn’t have a problem with some type of personnel turnover problems. Depending on the study you look at, the impact of turnover ranges from three months of salary for a low level employee who leaves to as high as 400 percent of the annual salary of an upper-level person […]

StrategyDriven Change Management Article

A Technology Case Study: Implementing What the Customer Wants

In order for any change to occur – whether it’s a decision to purchase a product, or an implementation to add new technology – whatever touches the ultimate solution must buy-in to the change. Often our focus is on getting the end-result we think we want. We forget that without buy-in from the necessary people […]